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Everything posted by Spasm

Robin - all in all it takes about a week including the restoration and all the split thumbs from the sanding. Lots of music and a pleasant way to pass the time while thinking about the next project.
Now, I've got a side of a WD petrol/water can, a couple of WW2 German Ammo boxes, a British WW1 sniper plate, half a dozen relic German helmets, half a dozen WW1 British helmets, quite a few WW1 and WW2 British water bottles and I still haven't got those bits of Afghan Apaches from work yet - must have a chat with those REME guys again. I'm short of WW1 German helmets, anyone have any relics they want to part with?

Tighten up the newspapers and give them a wash or six and some shadows
Move onto the other side and do as above to get another couple of pictures on. Then onto the back and paint directly over the brown base for another picture. All painting by numbers and saving with a coat of lacquer and then applying washes to sneak up on what you want.
I'll save ya'll from the rest of the process as they are all much the same until I get onto the medal, laters.....

The edges of the now sharp white base need to be made a bit fuzzy. Use a drop of water and your nicked scourer. This can also be used for any overspray. Wipe clean.
Take the newspaper headlines and give it a good dose of pencil on the back - I've a big thick 6B to do this quickly. Lay and tape on over the white and trace with a ballpoint pen. You can see where you've been so you don't forget which bit you've already traced between sips of tea. Make sure the paper doesn't move as you'll need to hold it as you draw around the 'bends' in the helmet. Ta-da a rough copy of the headlines.
Position and tape the next piece and trace again.
Once all traced then get your brushes and paint out and fill in the outlines. Painting by numbers, time consuming but pretty easy. Don't worry too much about the weenie details as we're going to make this look old and a bit ragged so the details won't be too clear when finished.

Right, back to the Dunkirk helmet...
You've had a good session on Google and have found loads of pictures that will go on the helmet. Obviously you own the rights to all the pictures and have permission to use them...ahem.
Get them all to the right scale by mucking around with the settings on your printer and print them all out. You may need several reams of paper and a few dozen ink cartridges to get everything right.
Then choose which ones you'd like on the helmet, cut them out and temporarily stick them onto the helmet to get the look you want.
Pick something to start with, here I've gone for the newspaper headings. Hold the picture onto the helmet and draw round it with pencil. Take the picture away and stick masking tape around the drawn border. You'll notice that the lines you've drawn don't look straight. This is because you're drawing onto the 3D curves of the helmet, so you'll need to position the masking tape to ensure the corners look square and the edges look straight. This takes a bit of fettling until it all looks ok.
Mask off the rest of the helmet. Don't stick the masking tape down too well or it'll be a bugger to get off, you're just looking to stop any overspray onto the rest of the helmet. Use too much masking tape or you'll get overspray. As you've got a lacquered helmet any overspray can be fairly easily removed but it's best not to get any in the first place.
Here I'm using some Citadel Skull White, a hobbyist's rattle can spray that is a bit more expensive but it dries really quickly and is meant for grown up kids to paint their Space Marines. So it's easy to use and can be sprayed thinly. You don't need a thick white, just a light coating to give your painting a base to work from. You could always just paint this base with white acrylic brushed on but it takes ages to cover the brown and ends up with brush marks that will show when you're laying washes on top.
Pull off the masking tape and hey presto, all ready to get into making it look like an old newspaper.

I obviously need a new camera or to improve my knowledge on what buttons to press, the helmet is a lot better in the flesh.
Thanks Gents, nifty with pots is what I'm trying for. Enjoy the helmet Robin.
Here's the antique cricket bat (I've no idea how old it is, does anyone have any knowledge on these?) and the continuing portrait.
WC Grace, who was a Doctor and a Surgeon, and one of the greatest English cricket players ever. He achieved the double (1000 runs and 100 wickets in one season) 8 times in his cricket career. He played football for the Wanderers and could throw a cricket ball a distance of 122 yards.
He was born here in Bristol which is where he was a GP. His never seemed to get around to invoicing his poorer patients and regularly visited the local workhouses on his rounds. Sounds like a great bloke.
Back to the Dunkirk helmet.

Sorry I haven't been getting on with this. I've been diverted by a couple of other things, this being one of them.
Made by Montagu Odd, who hand made cricket bats for one of the greats....
Not really militaristic but it does give an idea of how to build up a portrait

Impressed or what. Well done Tony. Looks good to me, you'll get used to how the colours interact and how to change the tones to get the final result you want.
Not using enough lacquer will not cause anything to bubble up. All I can think of is that the paint was not quite dry before you lacquered, this will seal in the moisture and cause the paint to lift as the water evaporates. Acrylic paint is basically a resin or plastic once dried. It sticks to the lower wet or dry coat by drying around millions of weenie bits that stick up into the new coat. The bubbling has caused these to separate and therefore will now not be as stuck together as they should be. If kept dry and stable there shouldn't be a problem but I wouldn't be surprised if, given time, you loose those sections. However, lacquer is pretty strong so you may never see any problem as the final coats of lacquer will hold the layers in place.
Dampness in the air causes the lacquer to go misty, lacquering in the rain causes what looks like white spots (which is really annoying) but doesn't cause any lifting. Putting on thick coats of lacquer can cause 'orange peel' (which needs rubbing down to make smooth). Your lacquering looks good. Don't get too heavy handed with the lacquer, you're not painting a car or bike tank for the glossy finish. You can put on as many coats of lacquer as you want just keep them thin like you have.
Nice one. Bloody excellent for a first one, you should've seen my first one

Is this the finished helmet or just the base colour? Assuming it's the base colour and you are going to start with the lighter colours (ie at post #24) then it looks ok to me.
If it's the finished helmet then yes, it looks like it needs lightening up. Again, go back to post #24.
Keep going it looks pretty good to me. And yes, keep the darkening paint glazes very thin and dab away.

Tony
Yep, making a mess is all part of the experience. Would be good to have a look at some photos.
My photos may not show the helmet correctly as the colour does look a bit darker in the flesh. You're trying to get something that looks authentic, If it looks ok, and old untouched helmets are pretty dark, then I'd leave it. Not too much problem painting over what you've got using the dark colour as the base. Apply the lightest colour again and then use very watery colours to darken down. Dry each coat until you get the colour you want.
If I was really unhappy then I'd start over. It's been some time but I remember cleaning the paint off of a few before I was getting what I wanted. Acrylic comes off pretty easy with some paint remover under a running tap and a bit of rubbing. Don't be worried about starting over, practise makes whatsit and all that.
Remember you're sneaking up on the colour, not trying to get it in as few coats as possible. Keep the paint thin and use plenty of dabbing off to get a worn look. It'll come, but watch the carpet with all the splashing about.

Robin and Frank - thank you Gents.
Frank, you've either tried a wash on a painting - which came out rubbish - or it's me not explaining what a wash is. A wash is a weenie bit of colour in loads of water. Even thinner than ink. When applied it runs and drips off of the surface so some mopping up kitchen roll is required otherwise you'll get a punch in the ear from the Admin Staff for painting the carpet.
If applying to a painting, say a water colour, then the area you want to wash is painted first with clear water to make the paper wet. Then apply your already mixed wash colour and move around with a big soft brush. On helmets etc, I'm trying to change the colour slowly. I don't put on the clear water, I just put on a wash (or glaze), dry it with the hot gun, and see what I've got. I then add another wash, maybe of a different colour, dry it, and look to see what I've got. I compare to the colour I'm trying to achieve (if I've got a sample or what I'm imaging in my head). And again apply another wash to get to where I want to be. Sometimes I can over do it and want to take the last wash off, this is where an intercoat of lacquer is handy otherwise all of the wash layers come off.
Acrylic paints tend to lift when applying a coat on top and dry darker than when wet. This is just something to get used to through trial and error.
Always try to work from light colours to darker colours. It's very difficult to go lighter. Which is why I give each element to be painted on the dark helmet a base of white which is then darkened to the finished item. Exactly like doing a custom bike tank with an airbrush. So anyone wanting Harley Davidson, flames and an Eagle on an M1 helmet, urrrgh, let me know.
Go get your brushes out of the shed.

And on and on..... take it outside to check all looks ok in the daylight. If happy, then get a light spray of lacquer on it to protect as it'll get rubbed and scratched during the rest of the helmet painting.

Then I get a base of Yellow Ochre over the white. Then get a shadow around the badge using a wash of black. This won't want to stick to the lacquer so rub gently with your finger through the black being careful not to lift any of the adjacent painting off. It'll go on nicely then.
Mix up washes of brown/black/yellow getting darker and darker to outline and bring out the picture. Highlight areas where they need it. This doesn't happen quickly but allows the tones to be built up slowly. Darkening and highlighting over and over until happy. More and more detail can be had but this is a helmet to be seen as a whole so too much detail, and therefore time, can be wasted. Then use white to highlight the bright spots. Make these spots a bit bigger so that they appear to shine. Highlights can be overdone, maybe this badge has a bit too much but it can always be glazed later on to match the helmet.

Now to get the pictures onto the helmet.
Do some careful measuring and mark the centre line of the helmet. Use a floppy tape measure robbed from the other half's sewing box - it's better at measuring around bends and corners.
I nearly always start on the crest/badge that I've decided to use on the front. In this case the drawing of the three services with a King's crown above. Instead of colouring the RAF Eagle, Army Swords and Navy Anchor I think they'll be better as a sort of brass colour to match the crown.
The drawing/print has already been scaled to fit the helmet. Use a big pencil and cover the back of the picture so that it can be traced. I used to draw this stuff straight onto the helmet but it took ages and ended up with the same result. No need to learn how to draw, just trace the drawing with a ball point pen. The pencil then marked onto the helmet is easily removed even by rubbing with your hand so be careful to keep away from the pencil while doing your first bit of painting.
I go over the pencil with white. This may take a few coats and I build up the picture in the same way as doing an underpainting with an airbrush. You can see that the details are lighter where they need to be.

Spent a few hours on t'tinternet doing a bit of research and collecting pictures
These are the few I've whittled it down to
A crest/badge for all 3 services involved in Operation Dynamo. there's not really anything officially WW2 so I've drawn my own based on the MOD crest
Some newspaper headlines
A King's crown
Some photos
A still from the film Dunkirk
The flag that the little boats are allowed to fly and their badge
A Dunkirk veteran's badge
The Dunkirk Medal
The inscription from the Dunkirk memorial
These have all been scaled to a size that fits on the helmet

Tony
Ah yes, sorry. Not too clear was I.
I put a small blob of all of the colours on the plate. Form a puddle of water on the plate and then drag a weenie part of one blob, or some of the blobs into the mix to produce a glaze. Brush that onto the helmet and see if its giving the desired effect. If not, wipe off and/or add another glaze by dragging some more colour in with your brush. You can see if you look at the remaining blobs in post #30 that I've only used weenie parts of the blobs. Mix a glaze with the colour/s you feel the helmet needs, if it's too light add some umber and black, too red add some green, if it's too dark then lighten up etc etc. You can build up each glaze and dry before adding another. It may take quite few glazes until you get what you want. If it's all going wrong you can use some water and wipe off the glazes and start over.

Here it is all done with the lacquer dried. Also the detail of under the rim of the maker's stamp.
This could be where you've finished as you only wanted to repaint the helmet. Just re-build, remembering that you'll need to do a bit of painting on the crown bolt to match.
All done for today. In total I've spent about a full day in the preparation sanding, protection and then the base colouring.
I'll need to take some more photos to show the correct colour, now I look at it the photos make it look too red.
The next bit will be getting detailed paintings onto the helmet as a display piece. Same place, same channel in a day or so. See you there....